During a meeting of the Anti-Narcotics Task Force, Prime Minister Edi Rama called 2017 a successful year in the fight against cannabis, even though not a single criminal organization has been dismantled, and only lower-level drug traffickers have been apprehended. Their bosses, however, and their wealth, would become the next target of the government’s actions.
The Prime Minister declared that the success of this second phase would be determined by how much of the assets of criminal groups the police would be able to seize.
Every luxury car that challenges the law of public safety will have to go through the scan of the executive forces. […] Any asset owned on our territory that is unjustified or is doubted to be unjustified will go through the scan. […] Every dubious business has to go through the scan and all of them will be subjected to a legitimate legal process. […] Every dubious bank account or unjustifiable first impression will go through the scan.
The Prime Minister did not specify the details of this “scan,” or whether he himself will also be subjected to it. For example, the construction of his private villa in Surrel, designed by an architecture company whose co-founder was found to be involved in Albanian corruption scandals by the Belgian authorities, is completely unaccounted for.
He also announced that aerial surveillance will continue during September, and stated that the police still has work to do to clean criminal elements from its ranks.
No one is stronger than the State Police. The force of the “tough guys” come from the implication of the State Police, from betrayal in the ranks of the State Police. […] The traitors within the police should be given the most deserved and extreme lesson, as has happened during the operation against cannabis.
